Dependence on Programming Experts

[Chipp Walters]

On 7/12/06, Troy Rollins <troy_lists at rpsystems.net> wrote:

> Are you 100% sure that it would cause problems?

Nope. I am not. But then I'm not the one making the statement to that
effect either.

You of course know way more than I ever want to about Director. That
said, I do remember how slow Director was 'back in the day', after it
retooled itself to become an object-oriented programming language. We
in fact had to redo a commercial product for a customer based on our
enthusiasm for object programming in Director-- solely based on
unacceptably slow performance. That is unfortunately my only yardstick
w/regard to Director and object-oriented Lingo/Javascript/etc.. BTW,
the developer for that project was a very experienced Director
developer with already shipping product

And, there is a general opinion that adding more language and more
parsing requirements tends to slow down an interpreter.

Now, of course adding a single '=' assignment, probably wouldn't
create too much a burden on the engine, or us oldtime programmers.
And, like you, it would *really* save me some typing! But, I really
think the core of this discussion is more towards preserving the
language as is, or making significant changes (1 by 1) to make it more
'C-friendly' (or Pascal frienldy, Forth friendly, LISP friendly,
etc..).

I believe that is what Björnke, Rob, Dan, myself and others are reacting to.

In that light, I have mentioned three specific objections: Complexity,
Performance, and Readability/Maintainability. (is that 4?)

It is obvious there are those for some proposed language changes, and
others against. Though as Ken smartly pointed out, the subject is moot
as it's probably not something which is currently on Rev's radar. All
that said, RR will do what they want, and we will follow. So if they
decide to add a Javascript layer, then so be it.

best regards,
Chipp